David Croft (I)

It was pig-in-clover happiness just to watch the extracts from Dad's Army, It Ain't Half Hot, Mum and Hi-De-Hi! in the Omnibus tribute to Perry and Croft, who wrote them.

By relative standards, shows like Dad's Army and Porridge are miracles of observation, and even by absolute ones they are astonishingly good: the best of each (and both are getting repeats now on BBC1, thereby providing a feast of viewing) will never look entirely like period pieces, but will always retain their capacity to surprise. Compare the floundering abstractness of 'The Grove Family' to the subtleties of social nuance in 'Dad's Army': it's a clear advance.

Well, people enter Are You Being Served? by walking downstairs, one by one in more or less fancy dress. Original it ain't. Indeed, it is strangely familiar. It reminds me of that stuff of which not a drop is sold until it's 10 years old. The effect is much the same: you tend to fall on the floor and feel utterly ashamed of yourself afterwards.

Clearly trying to do another Dad's Army, Jimmy Perry and David Croft have come up with something called It Ain't Half Hot, Mum. [...] The whole thing is calculated to yield mirth in plenty. Unfortunately the air of calculation is precisely what comes over strongest. Windsor Davies, however, playing a neurotic sar'-major with imperialistic convictions, was very funny straight away. Judgment reserved.

This pain-wracked (I hope) pair write "Dad's Army" (BBC1) and "It Ain't Half Hot, Mum" (BBC1) which is about the misadventures of an army concert party in India is, I think, funnier. I particularly recommend the performance of Windsor Davies as the Sergeant Major.

Jimmy Perry's and David Croft's inaugural script was pretty feeble, with an over reliance on strained little jokes, but again this may be only a scene-setting problem.